Chapter Text
“Not on the table-”
“Hector!”
“Hector please-”
The wooden furniture legs creak and argue under the weight of the girl’s unconscious body, promising to give out if it was to be treated so roughly in the future. Eliwood fixes Hector with a withering look as the corners of Marth’s mouth turn downwards in dismay.
“Was this really necessary?” The young man asks, arms folded.
Hector grimaces in response. “She wouldn’t listen to me, so I had no choice but to knock her out. She tried to run, you know.”
“Obviously she tried to run,” Sigurd says, forehead creased and hands resting on his hips. He’s wearing that shirt that Eliwood hates again. “You were chasing her!”
“Only because she was running!”
“Pipe down, both of you. Hector, put her on the couch, for Gods’ sakes…”
The bearded man leans down to yank the young woman’s body off the table, lifting her into the air as if she weighed nothing. Eliwood sighs at the smear of blood left in her wake.
“I just cleaned this, you know…” Marth trails off, crestfallen. Sigurd meanders further into the room, giving the man a sympathetic pat on the back before following the procession.
“This is a bit more than ‘knocking her out’, Hector…” he says, observing the blood oozing down the girl’s forehead.
“Like I said, she ran. When I tried to catch her, she tripped and fell down the stairs- smacked her skull on every step on the way down. We were lucky she takes the back alleys; if anyone had seen that, I’d be in prison, and she’d be waking up in a morgue.”
Slivers of skull are still peeking through her mussed hair. Eliwood brushes the strands away from the wound carefully. “It’s not healing. Are we sure-?”
As if in response to his question, the flesh beneath his fingers begin to crawl and swell, moving to cover the wound in seconds. It’s as if she’d never fallen, the way it heals without a scar. Only the bloodstains remain, which Marth begins to clean off with a wet towel. Eliwood shoos Sigurd and Hector away from the couch in order to give the smaller man some space to work.
He points to Sigurd. “Why don’t you go find Corrin. She’ll be awake soon,” he jabs a thumb behind him at the couch, “and I think Corrin will be a big help when it comes to calming her down.”
“Right.” The taller man (and his terribly-patterned shirt) disappear out the back door, leaving Eliwood alone with a sheepish Hector.
“I didn’t mean to knock her upside the head. I promise.”
“I know you didn’t… but you could stand to be a bit more careful…” Eliwood sighs. “Girls get scared when large men start sprinting at them. How would you feel if a man twice your height cornered you in an alleyway?”
Hector grins. “Like I’ve finally found an evenly matched sparring partner.”
Eliwood jabs him in the ribs with a thin finger. “I can assure you, you are the only one that thinks like that. From now on, if this ever happens again, instead of chasing people down, just call me and I’ll handle it. Or call Marth. He’s good at this kind of thing.”
“I got it, I got it…” Hector raises his hands in submission.
Marth pokes his head over the back of the couch. “Guys? She’s breathing again…”
“Oh, good,” Eliwood starts, circling back around to stand by the girl’s feet. “Hector, why don’t you go make her some apology tea.”
Hector grumbles something about his skill in the kitchen before walking off to do as he’s told.
“I think it would be best if he wasn’t here when she woke…” Eliwood scratches the back of his neck. “I know she’ll freak out, but him looming over her won’t help at all…”
“She seems like a smart girl… hopefully we’ll be able to talk to her without a catastrophe happening…” Marth puts the dirty towel aside. The girl’s clothes are still stained, but he wasn’t about to undress a person he didn’t know right in the middle of the living room...
Eliwood nudges him on the shoulder. “Oh- before she wakes- your gun. Gimme your gun.”
“Ah, of course,” Marth fumbles with the holster on his belt for a moment before handing it over. “It’s not loaded, you can just leave it wherever.”
“Got it. Can’t believe I almost forgot… so much for looking non-threatening…” Eliwood reaches around to grab his own gun- a small pistol that was also thankfully devoid of ammunition. He drops both on a table out of view of the couch.
“Grab that too, would you?” Marth points to the shotgun resting against the wall near the exit. Eliwood swipes Sigurd’s weapon up, frowning as the bones in his spine crack and argue. He’s a bit jealous of Marth… why had the gods only granted him immortality once he’d gotten old enough to have achy joints? Seems unfair, if you were to ask him.
A soft groan comes from the couch. Marth stands up, giving the girl some space.
She doesn’t sit up immediately, instead simply groaning louder as one of her hands flops over the edge of the cushion. Marth leans down slightly, tilting his head to look at her.
“Um… Lucina, is it?”
The girl’s eyes open slowly. Gods, she looks exhausted. Eliwood remembers what the first few times waking up felt like… and yeah. Seems about right.
Lucina sits up with the urgency of a tortoise doing a backflip, leaning forward and placing her face in her hands with another miserable sound. Eliwood can scarcely imagine the headache she must be having right about now…
“We’re getting some tea ready for you, so just hold tight for now,” Marth says gently, still not daring to get too close. Lucina finally raises her head, blinking up at him in confusion.
“What… where am I? What happened?”
“You had a bit of a spill down some stairs… you bashed your head in quite badly…”
“I can tell,” she says, screwing her eyes shut.
Eliwood moves into her field of view quietly in an attempt to be non-threatening. She glances at him, but pays him little mind as she rubs the top of her head.
“Not even a scratch…” she mumbles to herself. “The way my head hurts, I’d assume I’d at least have a bump or something…”
“Ah, well…” Marth trails off. He was never very good at explaining this part. Eliwood remembers when he’d first met the man, and how it had taken him at least two days to finally spit out the word ‘immortal’. Hopefully the others would help speed the process along.
Hector comes out of the kitchen quietly, a mug of what Eliwood hopes is tea clutched in his hand. “Oh, she’s awake?”
Lucina turns toward him, and her body goes stiff in seconds. Of course she’d remember-
“ You! ”
She scrambles to her feet, almost falling as her knees wobble weakly. Marth leans over to grab and steady her, but she swats him away with her hand.
“Uh… I can explain…” Hector starts, offering the mug to the room at large.
“No!” Lucina shouts, stumbling backwards. “You-!” She looks around the room wildly. “Did you- did you kidnap me?!”
“Kidnap is a strong word…”
Lucina shrieks as she dashes towards the front door. Marth catches her by the wrist, only to receive a punch to the eye in return. Hector rushes around her to block the exit with his large body.
“Hold your horses there-” He shoves her back, making her yelp, “Just let us explain-”
“No! Let me go -” She tries to barrel past him, only to be stopped by one of Hector’s heavily muscled arms pushing her away again, lighter this time. “Who are you people? Sex traffickers? Is this a ransom thing? Because I can tell you right now, I have about three dollars to my name.”
“No-” Eliwood says, hands raised, “No- Gods no. Nothing so nefarious- Please, Lucina. We mean you no harm, so just calm down a bit and let us explain-”
“You got hit by a car the other day, right?” Hector interrupts, looking down at Lucina.
“... I did, yes. What does that have to do with-”
“And you were totally fine after, right?”
“Somehow, but-”
“I assume when you woke up in the hospital, everyone was fawning over you like you were some sort of medical miracle, right?”
“Of course- I’d been hit by a car!”
“But when you woke up, nothing was wrong with you at all. No broken bones, no concussion, no nothing, correct?”
“Hector…” Marth sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Eliwood shakes his head in a similar fashion. So much for explanations with tact…
“Y-yes. I was perfectly fine. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“A-ha! There’s the key word here- alive .” Hector holds out his arms widely. “Can you guess why you were able to get up like nothing was wrong?”
“Because I'm incredibly lucky?”
“No. Not even close.” Hector takes a deep, dramatic breath. “You’re immortal.”
Marth shakes his head, wandering towards the back door. Eliwood draws closer to Lucina, who straightens up with a deep frown.
“Immortal-?” She looks around the room again. “Who are you people? Some weird cult?”
“Gods, I wish,” Eliwood mumbles as he leans against the wall. “Would be a bit more interesting around here, if you ask me.”
The other door clatters as Sigurd makes his way back into the house, one arm full of a mass of black and white fur that could barely be called a cat. Corrin hisses at the room as Sigurd hovers in the doorway, wary.
“We’re all immortal. That’s what I was trying to tell you when I caught up with you in that alleyway-”
“You’re insane!” Lucina shouts at him, making another dive towards the door, only to get shoved away again.
“I can prove it to you!” Hector reaches for his coat pocket. Fuck- Eliwood had taken everyone else’s firearms except for-
“Hector, absolutely not- ”
“Here, I’ll show you!”
Lucina screams as the gun is brought out into the open. He doesn’t point it at her, instead pointing it towards the back door, leveling it at the overgrown mop of fur in Sigurd’s arms.
“Hector! What have we said about shooting Corrin!” Eliwood demands, pushing off the wall and stalking towards the other man. Corrin is a cat, and doesn’t have the capacity to understand her own immortality. Shooting her will make her that much harder to care for in the future, and Naga knows how many times that mistake has been made in the past…
“Ah, right, my mistake, here-” Hector raises the angle of the gun by a foot and pulls the trigger.
Sigurd’s body falls back through the door with a clatter as Corrin leaps from his arms, sprinting into the house. Lucina seems to agree with the cat, jumping backwards with a hand over her chest and her mouth hanging open in fear.
“You-!” She takes a startled gasp as Marth shoots Hector a displeased look. “You killed him!”
“I did!” Hector says, waiving the revolver in front of him. “And I’ll do it again if you need me to really drive the point home!”
“Hector!” Eliwood yells, fuming. Two days of Marth tiptoeing around the issue was better than Hector’s method any day, but at least he wasn’t the example this time around. “Give me your gun- you’ve lost your privileges for the week!”
He rips the revolver out of the other man’s grip and unloads the chamber onto the floor, kicking the bullets away with force.
Marth drags Sigurd’s body the rest of the way into the house by the ankles with a sigh. Eliwood stands on his toes and leans to the side to see the rest of the way into the kitchen- Hector had been perfectly on his mark, as usual. Sigurd’s brain matter was undoubtedly splattered all over the yard, if the bleeding hole between the man’s eyebrows had anything to say about it.
He doesn’t stay prone on the floor for long. With a deep gasp, the man blinks, and the bloody divot in his skull becomes smaller and smaller until it’s completely gone- leaving only a thick stream of red in its place. Marth grabs Sigurd by the elbow, hauling the taller man to his feet. Eliwood turns from the scene as Sigurd leans over to cough into the crook of his elbow- at least the blood had ruined his shirt. Maybe he could get away with throwing it out now.
Lucina stands stock still, eyes bulging.
Eliwood gestures weakly behind him. “Um… we wanted to ease you into it. But yeah. Hector’s right. Uh- welcome to the club, I guess.”
He definitely hears his shoulder pop in its socket, but he manages to dash forward just in time for Lucina to pass out in his arms rather than onto the floor. He glares up at Hector once more as he hears Sigurd mumble a request for Aspirin.
“From now on, I'll do all the talking, got it?”